and Henry VII._, i., 233.] [Footnote 519: See detailed accounts in _L.

and P._, iii., 1284, 1356.

Shakespeare's account in "Henry VIII." is remarkably accurate, except in matters of date.] Buckingham's execution is one of the symptoms that, as early as 1521, the failure of his issue had made Henry nervous and susceptible about the succession.

Even in 1519, when Charles V.'s minister, (p.

183) Chievres, was proposing to marry his niece to the Earl of Devonshire, a grandson of Edward IV., Henry was suspicious, and Wolsey inquired whether Chievres was "looking to any chance of the Earl's succession to the throne of England."[520] If further proof were needed that Henry's anxiety about the succession was not, as has been represented, a mere afterthought intended to justify his divorce from Catherine, it might be found in the extraordinary measures taken with regard to his one and only illegitimate son.